and thus grant him immunity from the U.S. courts or not since he was still a king-in-waiting. On being allowed to proceed, the case would allow going into the details of the assassination and the potential deposition of the prince or his brother – the Saudi ambassador to the U.S. at the time. Judge Bates’ decision is said to be reliant on that of the Biden administration, whose siding with the prince would lead to havoc amongst human rights advocates. Biden administration's opinion was said to be filed in the court by no later than 17 November. Keith Harper leading the case against the Saudi prince is a former Obama administration official who has criticized the Saudi prince's designation as a Prime Minister a means of attempting to "manipulate the court's jurisdiction". On 17 November 2022, the Biden administration ruled that Saudi Arabian Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has immunity from a lawsuit over the murder of Jamal Khashoggi. Senior Democratic lawmakers sharply criticized the Biden administration's action. Legal experts said that the U.S. government's position will likely lead judge John Bates to dismiss a civil case brought against Prince Mohammed and his alleged accomplices by Hatice Cengiz. On 29 November 2022, following the assertion from the Biden administration that Mohammed bin Salman was immune to liability as a foreign head of state, Hatice Cengiz urged a U.S. judge to allow her lawsuit to move forward against Saudi Arabian Crown Prince. But, on 6 December 2022, U.S. federal judge John D. Bates dismissed the lawsuit citing Joe Biden's granting of immunity to the prince. Bates also issued a dismissal for two top Mohammed bin Salman aides as well, Saud al-Qahtani and Ahmed al-Assiri, on jurisdictional grounds. Commentary The Middle East correspondent of The Independent, Patrick Cockburn, wrote that the killing of Jamal Khashoggi "is by no means the worst act carried out by Saudi Arabia since 2015, though it is much the best publicised. ... Saudi leaders imagined that, having got away with worse atrocities in Yemen, that any outcry over the death of a single man in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul was something they could handle". Vanity Fair reported that "several House Republicans have mounted a whisper campaign to discredit Khashoggi—or at least, to knock his reputation down a few notches—based on his ties to the Muslim Brotherhood, and his role as an embedded journalist who covered Osama